When Jeff Pearlman began doing research on a book he wanted to write about the Lakers’ “Showtime” era of the 1980s – it involved a two-year-process and about 300 interviews – someone asked him about whether the state of the current Lakers would make any difference in how the project was received.

Meaning, would it be better if these Lakers were pointed toward another NBA title or if they were on a lull and about to miss the playoffs.

“This was right after the Lakers got Dwight Howard (in August, 2012),” said Pearlman, the former Sports Illustrated writer and author of several New York Times’ best-selling books. “My thought was that if the Lakers were playing great, everyone would be celebrating how great this team was, and might overlook the book.

“But, still, I didn’t want them to be this bad. This is kind of ridiculous. It doesn’t seem right that the Lakers are this terrible. It’s hard to watch.

“It’s so funny how a team can go stale so quickly. There’s Lakers jerseys hanging in the store now that look so stale. Even the Kobe jersey looks like something for a retired player, right next to the Steve Nash jersey.”

Pearlman was admitting as much as he sat in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in L.A. Live on Friday night, as fans dressed in their purple and gold – some of them in Bryant jerseys – headed over to Staples Center to actually witness a game between the Lakers and Sacramento Kings.

Even with the Lakers’ 126-122 triumph, they still trailed the Kings at the bottom of the Western Conference.

So, anyone want to call a time out and relive some “Showtime” now?

For the record, Pearlman does, with an excavation process that would have made the scientists at the La Brea Tar Pits even relive some goose-bump moments.

In “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s” (Gotham Books, 482 pages, $30, released Tuesday),” Pearlman polishes off some gems we don’t believe we’ve read before, or couldn’t have known at all had he not traveled around the country to meet up again with those who lived it first hand.

Pearlman explains not just the process, but how the final product produces a whole new level of understanding about that Lakers’ run that produced five NBA titles between the time Jerry Buss took over the team from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979 until Magic Johnson’s first retirement in 1991:

Q: How did someone like you, a kid growing up in New York in the 1980s, view the Lakers and “Showtime” from all those miles away? Was it as big as a Springsteen concert would have been during that period in his heyday?

A: I think of Michael Jackson, doing the moonwalk for the first time, and we’re all watching it on some awards show and we’re like, “Oh, my God.” To me, that’s what it more like. Dazzling. The Lakers to me, it’s kinda weird – I grew up in a very white, sheltered town and everyone there liked St. John’s over Georgetown, because it was the “white team.” But I was in a very liberal, hippy-dippy house where we could root for the athletes with the big Afros, the colorful names, players like Garry Templeton, Ken Griffey Sr. And the Lakers, to me, were better to root for than the “white” Celtics because they were cool, Magic was the coolest guy ever, a 6-foot-9 point guard, looking right, looking left, passing . . . Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamaal Wilkes . . . they were fancy, snazzy to me, exciting, explosive and dynamic.

The Lakers’ “Showtime” things I still recall as a kid – Magic and Isiah Thomas and “the kiss” before the Lakers-Pistons finals, Kevin McHale and the clothesline on Kurt Rambis in a Lakers-Celtics final. Every Lakers-Celtics finals games I can remember very vividly. Nobody else in my family cared about sports, so I’d be alone watching these games.

Doing this book is like diving back into your childhood. Like you get to go into your TV and remember things you once saw.

Q: And to revisit “Showtime” now, in today’s context, what made that process worthwhile?

A: I really enjoy more going and finding the smaller characters and smaller figures from that time. I love finding a player like Earl Jones, Wes Matthews, Mark Landsberger, Billy Thompson, Mike Smrek. They have the stories that haven’t been told about everyone. I also wanted to do a book that was fun, and lively, colorful, exciting, so I thought this was ideal.

Q: As you talk about Jack McKinney, you point out that he is “the greatest NBA coach 999 of 1,000 basketball fans have never heard of.” Do you think retelling this story finally gives proper context and credit to him as the first real coach of “Showtime” until that freak bike accident in Palos Verdes disabled him, led to Paul Westhead taking over and getting a title in Magic’s rookie season of 1980, and then led to Pat Riley coming in and ramping it up?

A: I hope so. Jack McKinney is one of the great tragedies in the history on the NBA. He would have had Pat Riley’s success. The players were excited to play for him. He had a great track record.

Q: Even if, as you described, Jack McKinney had “the personality as glitzy as a truck stop”?

A: You don’t have to have a dynamic persona to coach dynamically. He was well known on the East Coast as a great college coach. He would have been great.

Q: Going back another step in that coaching chain, the fact that Jerry Tarkanian was ready and willing to take the Lakers job before his friend was killed, supposedly by mobsters, was that something you didn’t really know much about?

A: I had no idea. It’s amazing to remember that the path to Pat Riley, he turns out to be the luckiest guy in the world. It was going to be Tarkanian, then McKinney, then Westhead, and there’s Riley as the accidental coach at a time when even Jerry Buss wanted Jerry West to take over. But Jerry West didn’t want to do it.

Q: Considering the Buss family still owns the Lakers, do you see the Lakers able to recapture “Showtime” anytime soon?

A: They don’t have a dynamic star. Kobe Bryant isn’t there. That team of the ‘80s had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. This team has Chris Kaman. The Lakers’ supporting cast in “Showtime” was crazy, crazy, deep talented – I mean, Norm Nixon, Jamaal Wilkes, Bob McAdoo, Kurt Rambis, Mychal Thompson, Mike McGee . . . This team is very, very thin. And Pat Riley was one of the all-time brilliant coaches. Mike D’Antoni is a good system coach. And then there’s Jerry Buss and Jim Buss. All they have in common is they’re related.

To recapture “Showtime,” I don’t think that happens anyway. It’s interesting how Jerry Buss had this vision. He wanted an NBA game to be an event and he made it that – Laker Girls, Dancing Barry, the marching band. He took something that was a stale product, something that people perceived as a bunch of coked-up millionaires, and it became an event. And it was great. But the problem is, what we have now isn’t the same. Staples Center isn’t the same as the Forum, it’s just bigger. I hate the non-stop noise that’s playing now, there’s never a break. Music when the other team is dribbling the ball. But that’s all a byproduct of “Showtime.” Nothing like this could come back because, in some ways, it’s already here. There may not be another team like the Lakers, but the NBA itself is a direct byproduct of Jerry Buss’ vision. Everyone’s making tons of money, celebs coming to games in every city . . .

Q: Lakers fans who know the Kobe-Shaq experience may still never figure out why they couldn’t get along. Can they see from this book how Magic and Kareem worked it out?

A: When Magic came into the league, he was deferential, this is Kareem’s team. It doesn’t mean he played deferentially. He always referred to Kareem as “Cap,” and Kareem, to his credit, every now and then he would be critical of Magic. Kareem could appreciate who Magic was, and Magic would have liked a more Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid kind of thing, but they played so great together they didn’t have to be buddy-buddy. They played brilliantly together and respected each other’s abilities. No jealousy. Magic has called Kareem a “mentor,” but I don’t know, it just seemed like he was more of an elder statesman. Maybe it helped, too, that Kareem didn’t have Shaq’s kind of ego. He was also very stand-offish, really guarded, not good with the press. So maybe with Magic that helped, he wasn’t looking for the attention.

Q: This may be the only book written that has 15 indexed references to Mark Landsberger. Why does he become such a focal point for someone who was only with the team 3 ½ seasons in the early ‘80s?

A: I kept hearing from a bunch of people that Landsberger would be the one who’d tell his wife things that his teammates were doing off the court. Honestly, I feel I’m too mean in this book to him a bit. He was an easy target. You ask anyone about Landsberger, and they’d start out, “Man that guy was really dumb . . .” One of the rules in a locker room is what happens on the road, stays on the road. He talked to his wife, heaven forbid, and then he got isolated by his teammates. The guy could rebound like a freak, though.

Q: Imagine what “Showtime” could have been if Jerry Buss had not nixed the two things proposed to him that you point out – one was a male baton twirler who performed at halftime along with the Laker Girls, and the other was an idea for a mascot named “Slam Duck.”

A: He was right. Buss really had his pulse on what was cool. Especially as an older guy. The duck, that was Linda Rambis and Jeanie Buss’ idea, and he said, “No, we’re not doing the duck.” They got an artist to sketch it out. “No.” I remember when the San Francisco Giants tried to introduce a mascot that was a giant crab and people started throwing ice chunks at him. That would have happened here. Same thing with “we’re not having a guy baton twirler.” Smart move.

Q: There aren’t any stories in there about “Dancing Barry”?

A: I did interview him.

Q: Where did you find him?

A: He’s in North Carolina. I think he’s a magician.

Q: So what’s his story?

A: His dancing days are done. He was happy to be found. He thought he deserved more credit for “Showtime” than he got. He wanted to get paid more. I think he saw himself as a bigger piece of the “Showtime” puzzle than people want to give him credit for. I feel like the line between him and male baton twirler is not that big.

More Q-and-A with Pearlman about “Showtime” at www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth

Tom Hoffarth is a freelancer. He had been with the Daily News/Southern California News Group since 1992 as a general assignment sports reporter, columnist and specialist in the sports media. He has been honored by the Associated Press for sports columnists and honored by the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Association for his career work. His favorite sportscaster of all time: Vin Scully, for professional and personal reasons. He considers watching Zenyatta win the Breeders' Cup 2009 Classic to be the most memorable sporting event he has covered in his career. Go figure that.

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